Welcome to another episode of Flip Your Script, a vodcast by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, hosted by ACLM President Dr. Padmaja Patel. In each episode, we explore five key takeaways on how lifestyle medicine is helping clinicians and leaders reimagine the future of healthcare.
This episode, “Changing Care from the Inside Out,” features Kaitlyn Pauly, Chief Integration Officer at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. Kaitlyn shares her journey from bariatric and weight management care to national leadership in lifestyle medicine—and the pivotal lessons she’s learned about what it truly takes to create lasting healthcare change.
The conversation explores why evidence and good outcomes alone aren’t enough to transform healthcare. Kaitlin breaks down the real drivers of sustainable change, including payment models, quality measures, clinician support, and system-wide alignment. From early resistance to growing national recognition, she reflects on how lifestyle medicine has evolved—and what still needs to happen for it to become standard care.
You’ll also hear insights into national advocacy efforts, including progress with CMS and CMMI, emerging reimbursement pathways, and large-scale initiatives bringing lifestyle medicine into community health centers, rural health systems, and government programs. Kaitlin highlights why aligning incentives is essential to ensuring patients have access to lifestyle medicine—and clinicians can deliver it sustainably.
If you’re interested in healthcare transformation, payment reform, implementation science, or scaling lifestyle medicine beyond passion and into practice, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
The American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) is the medical professional society for physicians and other professionals dedicated to clinical and worksite practice of lifestyle medicine as the foundation of a transformed and sustainable healthcare system.
Lifestyle medicine is a medical specialty that uses therapeutic lifestyle interventions as a primary modality to treat chronic conditions including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.
Lifestyle medicine-certified clinicians are trained to apply evidence-based, whole-person, prescriptive lifestyle change to treat and, when used intensively, often reverse such conditions. Applying the six pillars of lifestyle medicine—a whole-food, plant-predominant eating pattern, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances, and positive social connections—also provides effective prevention for these conditions.
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